Look and Discuss may be the most effective CI tool of all. Yesterday I found myself teaching an image in a much slower way than I usually speak to my French 3 class. The kids were more engaged than usual. They understood more. They did a lot more voluntary response output than usual. The class was more “real”.
I think it was because of the L and D. If L and D can help us slow down (I don’t know how but it just does) then it is a very valuable CI tool indeed!
However, I tend to overteach when I use L and D. I need to learn to just focus on a few structures and teach them very slowly with megacircling and then move on to another image. The reason for that is that the kids get tired of looking at the same image.
Also, when I say too many things about the same image, I take them right out of bounds into too many new expressions. Short with targeting just a few structures – that’s how we should treat each image in L and D, unless, of course, the class goes off on it and turns it into a story.
So if there is a picture of Peter Townshend on the screen with his right arm in the air and his left hand on the guitar, we would focus on what first jumps out at us, what first presents itself as we turn to turn to look at the image to start our class:
1. Class is this a guitar player? (circle that – you are teaching the term “guitar player” so you must say it in every question/statement you make without fail)
2. Does he have long hair? (etc.)
3. Is he wearing a watch? (etc.)
Now this is non-targeted. I just turned to the image, reacted to whatever caught my eye, and never felt any need to get nervous about teaching the kids some target structure from some list that I stressed out about over the summer to prepare for my year. I just started asking questions. That is so freeing for me to teach in that way. It makes teaching easy.
Another point to make about L and D is that as I was demonstrating it for a visitor yesterday, and this is a point I made above but I think it bears repeating, it totally surprised me when my level three class totally got into the very simple (in my mind) French I was presenting in L and D. I had been thinking unconsciously for some time now that since these were advanced students (not really – they are not advanced until they have had 5-7 years of CI, if that) that they would not benefit from my speaking at a level 1 pace with level 1 structures. I was so wrong. I should speak to my level 3 kids at a much slower pace than I normally do, and there is something about L and D that makes me do that.